


In the night

by Shinosuke



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, soft fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:38:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinosuke/pseuds/Shinosuke
Summary: After discovering the truth about his Galra-heritage, Keith has a nightmare and instinctively seeks out comfort.





	In the night

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a fandom secret santa and a present to Jona. I hope, you enjoy this :)
> 
>  
> 
> I have never written Voltron before, please be kind <3

It was dark in his room, when Keith awoke. Panting. Sweating. Clenching fists that had been deformed and clawed just seconds ago. He found himself in a state in between sleep and waking, in which the dream reached out into reality, trying to pull him back under. The strange sensation of fur trickled up and down his arms, he could just almost remember how it felt to have the cat-like control over his ears that his Galra-self had shown. One shaking hand rose up to his head, searching for human ears, the other switched in the light next to his bed. He was slipping from the dream's grasp, reality blurred into a clearer picture before his eyes.

He was home, Keith told himself. Well, as far as home went these days. To be more accurate, he was in his room in the castle of lions, which seemed as dormant as he should have been, but it was always hard to tell from their small personal cabins. Everyone could be up and about again, avoiding him as they had since he had found out about his true heritage, and he wouldn't even notice.

To be perfectly fair, it was mostly Allura, who was actively avoiding him, but seeing that she was such a vital part of the group… The heart that tied them all together and right now, this heart was filled with suspicion against him. Suspicion and an inherited hatred that came from being a part of the people who destroyed your planet and took over the whole galaxy by force. Keith knew where the distrust came from that flashed through her every move around him, but that made seeing it so clearly not the least bit easier. Dealing with this new knowledge was already hard enough, he didn't need the team to already be set on their decision that his Galra-blood declared him the enemy. 

 

Keith got up. The tired reluctance of his body betrayed the haste of his mind, urging him to move. He didn't even know where to go, but out of his room was a start. Through a dimly lit corridor. Around a corner and another one and another one and another one. Through a slightly brighter corridor, down a few steps, up the same amount and through another corridor.

It would not have surprised him had he found himself in front of his lion, but when the need to walk away from the lingering dream that had retreated to the back of mind finally vanished with a force that pulled him to an abrupt stop, he realized he was standing in front of a closed door. Another paladin's room. Not just any other paladin's, he knew more than recognized. He knew the familiar pull his heart felt at the proximity of the one person he would always be pulled towards, who he would always center around like a wayward moon.

“Shiro…”, he whispered and lifted his hand until his fingertips hovered a hair-width above the sleek door. He didn’t know if it was locked. His usually was, when he was trying to sleep, as Coran knew little to no privacy boundaries, especially not in an emergency, and sometimes, so did his fellow paladins. Shiro would probably lock his door to keep anyone from entering. His privacy wasn’t any less sacred to him than Keith’s was to himself, but there was a signal to be sent by a locked door, that didn’t quite line up with Shiro’s style of leadership. If Keith touched the door, the chance was high that it would open and wake Shiro up and what was he going to do, then? Tell him a nightmare woke him up? Like he was kid?

Slowly, he drew his fingers back. It had been a mistake to come here, even if it hadn’t been a conscious one, and he was about to leave, when he heard the surprised voice behind him.

 

“Keith?” Shiro stood in the corridor on Keith’s left, dressed in long, grey sweatpants and a black tanktop, his hair messed by sleep and with a surprised concern on his face.

Caught and a little ashamed, Keith took a step back from the door. “Shiro. I … thought you were asleep.” Shiro took a deep breath and straightened himself in the way guilty people do when they disappoint someone’s expectations. He wasn’t deliberately awake, Keith understood. That was when he spotted the dark circles under Shiro’s eyes, the rehearsed tension in his shoulders, the unconscious twitch of his human fingers.

“I guess we both are a little behind with that?”, Shiro finally said with a soft smile that spoke of nothing but understanding. “Why don’t you come in?”, he asked and passed Keith to open the door to his room. When he looked back to see if Keith wanted to join him, Keith could see the warm fondness that he had grown so used to and that -by some miracle- nothing had yet been able to destroy. Not leaving his homeplanet, not being captured, tortured and forced to fight. After all this, Shiro’s eyes were still pure and loving and Keith couldn’t help but admire him for it with all his heart. He felt the nightmare retreat as he finally slipped from its claws.

“You don’t have to, of course, if you’d rather … go back to your own room?”, Shiro said and Keith realized that he had not moved.

“No, sure.”, he mumbled and followed him inside, sitting down on the tousled bed that told the unspoken story of half a night’s worth of trying to fall asleep. His eyes slipped over Shiro’s metal arm and where it was attached to the scarred rest of his shoulder. It was surprisingly easy to forget what had lead to this and how surviving just about any part of Shiro’s journey might have broken any other man down to a shadow of themselves. The way Shiro went on and made all of this pain his own created the illusion that all of this was behind him now. That the scars on his body where the only thing it had left him with.

A night like this showed how deep the wounds actually were.

“I used to think I was the only one wandering around the castle at night.”, Shiro said into the silence. Just like Keith, he had sat down on the bed and was looking at some invisible focal point on the opposite wall.

“I guess, usually you are.”, Keith said, brushing over the fact that Shiro apparently did this on a regular basis, just as casually as Shiro himself had. Shiro dragged his gaze down and smiled. When Keith turned his head to look at him, the sad twist to his lips stung horribly in Keith’s chest. He wanted it gone.

 

“I had a nightmare.”, Keith finally confessed, which earned him Shiro’s attention. “I was a soldier of the Galra-empire and I fought you. All of you.”, he added, even though it didn’t feel necessary. Fighting Shiro meant fighting all of Voltron.

“Keith…” There was a soothing urge to Shiro’s voice that Keith had heard countless times in his life. It said: Be patient. It said: It’s okay. It said: It’s not your fault.

But Keith continued before Shiro could. After all, he hadn’t told him so Shiro could switch his own worries for someone else’s. There was a lesson to be taught here and Keith could only hope that at least a little bit of Shiro’s natural talent for making others know themselves better had rubbed off on him after all this time.

“It felt real. I know, everybody says that after a nightmare, but it wasn’t even like I couldn’t stop myself. It’s that I didn’t want to. I knew you were the enemy, it was so firmly engraved into my brain… I was full Galra, that automatically made you the enemy.”, he said. It felt awful when said out loud.

Knitted eyebrows were Shiro’s only answer. He had learned when to interrupt Keith and when to let him speak, long ago and Keith was sure Shiro could feel that he was going somewhere with his explanation. Keith appreciated this deep understanding that only Shiro had of him.

He looked ahead at the wall again.

“And I know where this is coming from. As much as I know that it doesn’t change a thing about the actual me.”, he said, slowly and carefully tying the knot between his wakefulness and Shiro’s. “No matter how much I try not to let”  _ my blood, my heritage, my people _ “it control me, it’s still there. I know I have to pretend like it doesn’t affect me. For the team, especially for Allura, but sometimes, it’s more than I can do.”, he admitted.

Shiro’s hand gently touched Keith’s arm. “Keith, that’s not true. You don’t have to pretend anything just because-” Keith looked at him, eyebrows raised and Shiro stopped mid-sentence when he realized that he was giving himself a speech on what it meant to show weakness in front of a team that relied on you being strong.

When Shiro smiled, Keith felt it in his whole body. “Fair enough.”, Shiro said and nodded in agreement. He had been beaten in his own game and was a big enough man to admit it. With a regretful sigh, Shiro shifted and rested his head Keith’s shoulder and for a moment, they both let the silence between them do the talking.

“We’re all here for you.”, Keith said, after a while. It felt important to verbalize it.

“I know. Thank you.”


End file.
